Region failover using the fastly CDN

This tutorial assumes you have installed the OpenStack command line tools and sourced an openrc file, as explained at Installation on Linux and Mac. You also need to have uploaded an SSH key called nginx-demo-key, as explained at Command line methods.

Introduction

This tutorial demonstrates how to set up automatic failover for a website that is hosted in two different Catalyst Cloud regions. In order to achieve automatic failover, two components are required:

  • Monitoring of the origin servers so you can decide when you need to switch from the primary to the backup

  • A mechanism to redirect traffic from the primary to the backup origin server

These components can be decoupled; they do not need to be provided by the same system.

Monitoring usually comprises a health check that ensures the site is responding to HTTP requests. A health check will usually have a threshold for the number of failed requests that must occur in order for the service to be considered down.

There are many mechanisms for redirecting traffic to alternative origin servers based on availability. The main ones are:

  • DNS redirection

  • Redirect via a proxy

  • Network redirection

DNS based traffic redirection is a very common method that is relatively easy to set up. It is a generally effective method for traffic redirection, however it is not atomic and suffers from a lag due to DNS propagation. Even with low TTLs (e.g. 300 sec) it can take more than 15 minutes before greater than 90% of traffic has switched. In many cases, a small volume of traffic will continue to be directed to the primary address 24 hours after switching. These issues are often caused by poorly implemented DNS services on CPE routers and to a lesser extent ISP and Operating System resolvers.

Proxy redirection is an effective method that avoids the lag present with DNS based solutions. With this method the frontend address that the client connects to does not change; the redirection is achieved by the HTTP proxy. Anycast is sometimes used in these solutions in order to provide a single static frontend address while providing a geographically diverse set of POPs.

The third common method is to rely on a network protocol like BGP to achieve failover to the backup origin server when the primary origin server becomes unavailable. This is achieved at the network layer such that traffic is directed to the router in front of the backup origin, when the router in front of the primary origin server becomes unavailable. This configuration is not trivial and requires you to have control of your own ASN.

This tutorial describes using a proxy redirection service. If you are interested in DNS based failover options, there are a number of providers who provide combined monitoring and automated failover:

Fastly CDN

This tutorial demonstrates how you can use the Fastly CDN service to provide automatic failover between Catalyst Cloud regions.

Fastly is a content delivery network (CDN) that provides many points of presence (POPs) globally. Fastly has good coverage in Australasia with two POPs in New Zealand (Auckland and Wellington). Fastly POPs act as a cache that sits between your origin servers and the end users of the site. All end user traffic is served by Fastly POPs; the POP will respond to an end user with either cached content or content fetched from an origin server, depending on the caching rules set by the origin servers.

Please consult Fastly’s getting started guide and documentation for more in depth coverage of how their service works.

Fastly has a number of features that make it useful for us:

  • Fastly has POPs in New Zealand

  • Fastly’s POPs are Anycasted meaning that you avoid DNS propagation issues as the IP address and domain name remain static for clients

  • Fastly provides a global network of Anycasted POPs that provides good resiliency and availability at the CDN layer

  • Fastly provides an origin health check and failover feature. There are not many other CDN providers who provide both the required services as a single solution

  • Fastly does origin health checks and failover per POP which provides the best failover behaviour. Only POPs that cannot reach the primary origin will failover

  • Anycast solutions like that provided by Fastly are effective DDoS mitigation tools that shield the origin servers from direct attack

  • Fastly’s global network of POPs will improve site performance for users particularly those outside of New Zealand

  • You can prototype the solution without any financial outlay

Disadvantages of this solution include:

  • Increased complexity for your site

  • Increased cost for your site (although this will be offset by lower bandwidth usage on the Catalyst Cloud)

  • Requires entering into a commercial relationship with an additional company

  • Your site content is cached outside of New Zealand (this is also a positive)

Website setup

Now that you understand what you are trying to achieve here, your first task is to set up your website in both regions. You are going to configure a simple Nginx webserver to serve the default Nginx web page. As this tutorial is not focused on how to set up web servers, you will configure the required stacks using the Heat cloud orchestration system.

It is beyond the scope of this tutorial to explain the syntax of writing Heat templates, thus you will make use of a predefined example from the catalystcloud-orchestration git repository. For more information on writing Heat templates, please consult the documentation at Orchestration.

First, check out the catalystcloud-orchestration repository, which includes the Heat templates you will be using:

$ git clone https://github.com/catalyst/catalystcloud-orchestration.git && ORCHESTRATION_DIR="$(pwd)/catalystcloud-orchestration" && echo $ORCHESTRATION_DIR

Note

This heat template references an SSH key called nginx-demo-key. You will need to change this to a key that already exists or upload a key with this name. This key needs to exist in both regions.

Building the Nginx Stack in two regions using Heat templates

In order to demonstrate region failover, you need to be running the service we wish to failover in both regions. To achieve this, you will build two simple stacks running an Nginx webserver.

Before you start, check that the template is valid:

$ heat template-validate -f $ORCHESTRATION_DIR/hot/ubuntu-14.04/nginx-region-instance/nginx.yaml

This command will echo the yaml if it succeeds and will return an error if it does not. Assuming the template validates, the next step is to build a stack.

Heat templates cannot be used to build a stack in more than one region simultaneously, so you will build a stack in each region individually. This Heat template is configured for the Porirua region, so start there:

$ heat stack-create nginx-por-stack --template-file $ORCHESTRATION_DIR/hot/ubuntu-14.04/nginx-region-instance/nginx.yaml
+--------------------------------------+-----------------+--------------------+----------------------+
| id                                   | stack_name      | stack_status       | creation_time        |
+--------------------------------------+-----------------+--------------------+----------------------+
| 18d3a376-ac33-4740-a2d3-xxxxxxxxxxxx | nginx-por-stack | CREATE_IN_PROGRESS | 2015-11-12T20:19:42Z |
+--------------------------------------+-----------------+--------------------+----------------------+

As you can see, the creation is in progress. You can use the event-list command to check the progress of the creation process:

$ heat event-list nginx-por-stack

Check the output of stack show:

$ heat stack-show nginx-por-stack
+----------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Property             | Value                                                                                                                                      |
+----------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| capabilities         | []                                                                                                                                         |
| creation_time        | 2015-11-12T20:54:53Z                                                                                                                       |
| description          | HOT template for building a simple nginx stack in the                                                                                      |
|                      | Catalyst Cloud nz-por-1 region.                                                                                                            |
| disable_rollback     | True                                                                                                                                       |
| id                   | 13ad022c-cbd3-4211-984c-xxxxxxxxxxxx                                                                                                       |
| links                | https://api.nz-por-1.catalystcloud.io:8004/v1/0cb6b9b744594a619bxxxxxxf424858b/stacks/nginx-por-stack/13ad022c-cbd3-4211-984c-xxxxxxxxxxxx |
| notification_topics  | []                                                                                                                                         |
| outputs              | []                                                                                                                                         |
| parameters           | {                                                                                                                                          |
|                      |   "nginx_secgroup_name": "nginx-sec-group",                                                                                                |
|                      |   "OS::stack_name": "nginx-por-stack",                                                                                                     |
|                      |   "private_net_cidr": "10.10.0.0/24",                                                                                                      |
|                      |   "private_subnet_name": "nginx-subnet",                                                                                                   |
|                      |   "key_name": "nginx-demo-key",                                                                                                            |
|                      |   "image": "ubuntu-14.04-x86_64",                                                                                                          |
|                      |   "private_net_pool_end": "10.10.0.200",                                                                                                   |
|                      |   "domain_name": "localdomain",                                                                                                            |
|                      |   "OS::stack_id": "13ad022c-cbd3-4211-984c-xxxxxxxxxxxx",                                                                                  |
|                      |   "private_net_gateway": "10.10.0.1",                                                                                                      |
|                      |   "public_net": "public-net",                                                                                                              |
|                      |   "public_net_id": "849ab1e9-7ac5-4618-8801-xxxxxxxxxxxx",                                                                                 |
|                      |   "private_net_pool_start": "10.10.0.2",                                                                                                   |
|                      |   "private_net_dns_servers": "202.78.247.197,202.78.247.198,202.78.247.199",                                                               |
|                      |   "private_net_name": "nginx-net",                                                                                                         |
|                      |   "router_name": "nginx-router",                                                                                                           |
|                      |   "servers_flavor": "c1.c1r1",                                                                                                             |
|                      |   "host_name": "primary"                                                                                                                   |
|                      | }                                                                                                                                          |
| parent               | None                                                                                                                                       |
| stack_name           | nginx-por-stack                                                                                                                            |
| stack_owner          | your@email.net.nz                                                                                                                          |
| stack_status         | CREATE_COMPLETE                                                                                                                            |
| stack_status_reason  | Stack CREATE completed successfully                                                                                                        |
| template_description | HOT template for building a simple nginx stack in the                                                                                      |
|                      | Catalyst Cloud nz-por-1 region.                                                                                                            |
| timeout_mins         | 60                                                                                                                                         |
| updated_time         | None                                                                                                                                       |
+----------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Once your stack status is CREATE_COMPLETE you can proceed to build your Wellington region stack. To build the Wellington region stack, you will use the same template while overriding a number of parameters. You also need to change your OS_REGION_NAME environment variable to point at the Wellington region:

$ OS_REGION_NAME=nz_wlg_2
$ heat stack-create nginx-wlg-stack --template-file $ORCHESTRATION_DIR/hot/ubuntu-14.04/nginx-region-instance/nginx.yaml \
  --parameters "public_net_id=e0ba6b88-5360-492c-9c3d-xxxxxxxxxxxx;private_net_dns_servers=202.78.240.213,202.78.240.214,202.78.240.215;host_name=backup"

Consult the output of the stack-show and resource-list commands to view the state of your stack:

$ heat stack-show nginx-wlg-stack
$ heat resource-list nginx-wlg-stack

You should now have a stack in each region which comprises an Nginx webserver serving identical content. When you begin to test region failover, you will want to be able to see which region you are hitting. To help you do this, a clound-init script was added to the Heat template you ran previously. This script adds an Origin header to your Nginx configuration which you can use to see which region you are accessing.

In addition to adding an Origin header, you are also adding a Cache-Control header that tells the Varnish service on Fastly’s POPs to not cache your content. This will let you observe the failover behaviour without needing to be aware of caching or waiting for the cached version of pages to expire.

Test this now:

$ PRIMARY_IP=$( OS_REGION_NAME=nz-por-1 nova show --minimal primary | grep network | awk '{print $(NF-1)}' )
$ curl -I -s $PRIMARY_IP
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/1.4.6 (Ubuntu)
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2015 02:57:12 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 612
Last-Modified: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 11:46:45 GMT
Connection: keep-alive
ETag: "5315bd25-264"
Origin: primary
Cache-Control: max-age=0, no-store
Accept-Ranges: bytes

$ BACKUP_IP=$( OS_REGION_NAME=nz_wlg_2 nova show --minimal backup | grep network | awk '{print $(NF-1)}' )
$ curl -I -s $BACKUP_IP
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/1.4.6 (Ubuntu)
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2015 02:57:55 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 612
Last-Modified: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 11:46:45 GMT
Connection: keep-alive
ETag: "5315bd25-264"
Origin: backup
Cache-Control: max-age=0, no-store
Accept-Ranges: bytes

Now you are ready to configure Fastly to begin proxying for your site.

Fastly signup

You need to signup to Fastly in order to configure your service. You can use the free developer trial to evaluate the service: you get $50 of traffic for free. After this you will be billed according to the pricing plan you select.

Fastly basic configuration

Note

We will not be doing any DNS or HTTPS setup for the purposes of this demonstration.

Please follow the Fastly documentation to signup and create your first service. You can skip the final step of creating a CNAME for your domain if you do not wish to configure DNS.

Once you have signed up and logged in to the Fastly app using the verification link emailed to you, you will be presented with a Quick Start wizard.

Name your service something like Region Failover Test.

Add the IP address of your primary server: this should be available in the environment variable $PRIMARY_IP.

You will need to select a domain name for the service. You can use the domain www.failover.net.nz which does not exist at the time of writing. Fastly does not check if this domain is valid or if it belongs to you.

../../_images/rf-quickstart.png

Click Configure and your site will be set up.

After 30 seconds or so, you should be able to hit your site via the URL provided:

http://www.failover.net.nz.global.prod.fastly.net

You should be presented with the default Welcome to nginx! being served up from your primary instance.

To verify this from the command line:

$ curl -I -s -H 'Host: www.failover.net.nz' http://global.prod.fastly.net
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/1.4.6 (Ubuntu)
Content-Type: text/html
Last-Modified: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 11:46:45 GMT
ETag: "5315bd25-264"
Origin: primary
Content-Length: 612
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2015 02:52:27 GMT
Via: 1.1 varnish
Age: 0
Connection: keep-alive
X-Served-By: cache-akl6420-AKL
X-Cache: MISS
X-Cache-Hits: 0
X-Timer: S1448851947.210128,VS0,VE32

Note

When hitting Fastly, you always need to specify a valid host header (-H flag in curl). Fastly needs this header so it knows which origin site to proxy for.

Notice the additional headers that have been added by Fastly. You can see that Fastly uses the varnish cache from the Via: 1.1 varnish header. X-Served-By indicates which Fastly node you are hitting. You can also see that Fastly is not caching any of your content from the X-Cache: MISS header. This is expected due to the Cache-Control headers you have set in Nginx.

Fastly backup backend configuration

The next step is to configure your backup site. Click on the configure tab on the toolbar.

../../_images/rf-configure.png

Now click the Blue Configure button.

../../_images/rf-service.png

Now you need to clone your current configuration by clicking on the + Clone button. This will let you edit a cloned configuration which you can deploy once you are happy that it is sane and validates. Please see the Fastly working with services documentation for more information about service versions and their activation.

../../_images/rf-clone.png

To set up your backup origin server as a Fastly backend, click the Hosts tab and click on the green + New button.

../../_images/rf-new-backend.png

Add a new backend called backup with the public IP address of your backup instance which should be available in the $BACKUP_IP environment variable. Set Auto Load Balance to No.

../../_images/rf-new-backend-create.png

Now edit the original backend, rename it primary and ensure that Auto Load Balance is set to No.

../../_images/rf-edit-backend-update.png

Fastly health check configuration

The next step is to configure a health check for your site. You will only be doing this for the primary instance. Click on the green + New button to create a new Health Check. Name your check something like Primary origin check and provide an appropriate Host Header , use www.failover.net.nz or the domain name you chose when you did the initial setup. Change the Check Frequency to Normal and click Create.

../../_images/rf-health-check-create.png

Now you need to assign this Health Check to your primary backend. Navigate to the Backends section under the Hosts menu item and edit the primary backend by selecting edit from the gear menu. Select the health check that you just created in the Health Check dropdown for this backend:

../../_images/rf-health-check-update.png

See the Fastly health checks tutorial for additional information.

Fastly failover configuration

Now you are going to follow the Fastly documentation for configuring a failover origin server.

This comprises three steps:

  1. Turn off automatic load balancing on both the primary origin server and the server that will become your failover

  2. Create headers that configure both the primary and failover origin servers

  3. Create a header condition that specifies exactly when to use the failover server

You have already ensured that automatic load balancing is turned off. You can check this if you are not sure.

The next step is to create two new request headers, one each for our primary and backup servers. Click the Content item in the menu on the left. In the Headers section click on the green + New button:

../../_images/rf-headers-new.png

Fill out the form with the following settings:

  • Set Name to Set primary backend

  • Set Type / Action to Request / Set

  • Set Destination to backend

  • Set Source to F_primary

  • Set Ignore If Set to No

  • Set Priority to 10

Note that the Source value should be the name of your primary instance prefixed with an F_.

../../_images/rf-headers-primary-create.png

Now you will repeat the process to create a header for the backup:

  • Set Name to Set backup backend

  • Set Type / Action to Request / Set

  • Set Destination to backend

  • Set Source to F_backup

  • Set Ignore If Set to No

  • Set Priority to 10

../../_images/rf-headers-backup-create.png

The final step is to configure a header condition that specifies exactly when to use the failover server. To do this, click on the gear icon next to the Set backup backend Header and select Request Conditions:

../../_images/rf-headers-request-conditions.png

Fill out this form with the following:

  • Set Name to Primary Down

  • Set Apply If to req.restarts > 0 || !req.backend.healthy

  • Set Priority to 11

../../_images/rf-headers-condition-create.png

You have now completed your setup. Your final task is to check that the configuration you have built is valid, and if it is, you need to apply it.

Ensure that your configuration version is shown to be valid by checking the VCL status in the top right corner. If it is, click Activate. If not, you will need to go back and check you have followed all the instructions correctly to this point.

../../_images/rf-valid-activate.png

Testing region failover

To test region failover, you will log in to your primary server and issue the following commands:

$ ssh ubuntu@$PRIMARY_IP
ubuntu@primary:~$ sudo service nginx stop
ubuntu@primary:~$ # wait for successful failover to backup
ubuntu@primary:~$ sudo service nginx start
ubuntu@primary:~$ logout

At the same time, you will run cURL in a loop, hitting the Fastly frontend. Note the addition of the two commented lines in the output: these lines indicate when the nginx stop and start commands are executed.

$ while true; do curl -i -s -H 'Host: www.failover.net.nz' http://global.prod.fastly.net | egrep 'HTTP|Origin' | tr -s '\r\n' ' ' | sed 's/$/\n/'; sleep 20; done
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Origin: primary
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Origin: primary # ubuntu@primary:~$ sudo service nginx stop
HTTP/1.1 503 Connection refused
HTTP/1.1 503 Connection refused
HTTP/1.1 503 Connection refused
HTTP/1.1 503 Connection refused
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Origin: backup
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Origin: backup
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Origin: backup # ubuntu@primary:~$ sudo service nginx start
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Origin: primary

Note

There is a small amount of downtime when the primary is not available and Fastly has not yet switched as the threshold for switching has not been reached. This window can be made shorter by increasing the Fastly Health Check Frequency. Also note that you have explicitly disabled caching for the purposes of this demonstration. In normal operations, Fastly will continue to serve cached content during this window.

Restrict HTTP access to fastly nodes

To finish, you are going to restrict HTTP access to fastly nodes. As Fastly is proxying for your site, there is no need for users to hit the site directly. Restricting access to Fastly address ranges provides DDoS resiliency for your site.

Note

You are using the jq utility to parse the json returned by https://api.fastly.com/public-ip-list. If you do not have jq, it is highly recommended. If you cannot use jq, an alternative command is provided.

$ nova secgroup-list-rules nginx-sec-group
+-------------+-----------+---------+-----------+--------------+
| IP Protocol | From Port | To Port | IP Range  | Source Group |
+-------------+-----------+---------+-----------+--------------+
| tcp         | 22        | 22      | 0.0.0.0/0 |              |
| tcp         | 80        | 80      | 0.0.0.0/0 |              |
+-------------+-----------+---------+-----------+--------------+

$ nova secgroup-delete-rule nginx-sec-group tcp 80 80 0.0.0.0/0
+-------------+-----------+---------+-----------+--------------+
| IP Protocol | From Port | To Port | IP Range  | Source Group |
+-------------+-----------+---------+-----------+--------------+
| tcp         | 80        | 80      | 0.0.0.0/0 |              |
+-------------+-----------+---------+-----------+--------------+

$ for ip in $( curl -s https://api.fastly.com/public-ip-list | jq -r '.addresses[]' ); do nova secgroup-add-rule nginx-sec-group tcp 80 80 $ip; done
$ #alternative
$ #for ip in $( curl -s https://api.fastly.com/public-ip-list | python -c 'import json,sys; print("\n".join(json.loads(sys.stdin.read())["addresses"]))' ); do nova secgroup-add-rule nginx-sec-group tcp 80 80 $ip; done
+-------------+-----------+---------+----------------+--------------+
| IP Protocol | From Port | To Port | IP Range       | Source Group |
+-------------+-----------+---------+----------------+--------------+
| tcp         | 80        | 80      | 23.235.32.0/20 |              |
+-------------+-----------+---------+----------------+--------------+
+-------------+-----------+---------+----------------+--------------+
| IP Protocol | From Port | To Port | IP Range       | Source Group |
+-------------+-----------+---------+----------------+--------------+
| tcp         | 80        | 80      | 43.249.72.0/22 |              |
+-------------+-----------+---------+----------------+--------------+
......

$ nova secgroup-list-rules nginx-sec-group
+-------------+-----------+---------+------------------+--------------+
| IP Protocol | From Port | To Port | IP Range         | Source Group |
+-------------+-----------+---------+------------------+--------------+
| tcp         | 80        | 80      | 103.245.222.0/23 |              |
| tcp         | 22        | 22      | 0.0.0.0/0        |              |
| tcp         | 80        | 80      | 23.235.32.0/20   |              |
| tcp         | 80        | 80      | 103.244.50.0/24  |              |
| tcp         | 80        | 80      | 202.21.128.0/24  |              |
| tcp         | 80        | 80      | 43.249.72.0/22   |              |
| tcp         | 80        | 80      | 203.57.145.0/24  |              |
| tcp         | 80        | 80      | 199.27.72.0/21   |              |
| tcp         | 80        | 80      | 104.156.80.0/20  |              |
| tcp         | 80        | 80      | 185.31.16.0/22   |              |
| tcp         | 80        | 80      | 103.245.224.0/24 |              |
| tcp         | 80        | 80      | 172.111.64.0/18  |              |
| tcp         | 80        | 80      | 157.52.64.0/18   |              |
+-------------+-----------+---------+------------------+--------------+